Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Rochester, MN, United States.
Dartmouth College, Lebanon, NH, United States.
JMIR Mhealth Uhealth. 2020 Jan 14;8(1):e14512. doi: 10.2196/14512.
The rapid proliferation of health informatics and digital health innovations has revolutionized clinical and research practices. There is no doubt that these fields will continue to have accelerated growth and a substantial impact on population health. However, there are legitimate concerns about how these promising technological advances can lead to unintended consequences such as perpetuating health and health care disparities for underresourced populations. To mitigate this potential pitfall, it is imperative for the health informatics and digital health scientific communities to understand the challenges faced by disadvantaged groups, including racial and ethnic minorities, which hinder their achievement of ideal health. This paper presents illustrative exemplars as case studies of contextually tailored, sociotechnical mobile health interventions designed with community members to address health inequities using community-engaged research approaches. We strongly encourage researchers and innovators to integrate community engagement into the development of data-driven, modernized solutions for every sector of society to truly achieve health equity for all.
健康信息学和数字健康创新的迅速发展彻底改变了临床和研究实践。毫无疑问，这些领域将继续快速增长，并对人口健康产生重大影响。然而，人们确实担心这些有前景的技术进步如何会导致意想不到的后果，例如使资源匮乏人群的健康和医疗保健差距永久化。为了减轻这一潜在的陷阱，健康信息学和数字健康科学界必须了解弱势群体面临的挑战，包括种族和少数民族，这些挑战阻碍了他们实现理想健康的目标。本文通过社区参与研究方法，展示了针对弱势群体（包括少数民族）的、以社区成员为中心的、定制化的社会技术移动健康干预措施的实例，说明了这些案例研究。我们强烈鼓励研究人员和创新者将社区参与融入到数据驱动的现代化解决方案的开发中，以实现社会各阶层的真正健康公平。
